Members of the media gather Friday outside the Charlevoix, Mich., home of John Ramsey, the father of JonBenét Ramsey. John Ramsey has chosen not to elaborate on his earlier statement of gratitude over the arrest of John Mark Karr in his daughters case.

Fundamental steps in the investigation into John Mark Karr’s possible involvement in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey didn’t really begin until after his arrest.

Though the Boulder County district attorney’s office had enough undisclosed evidence to get a judge to order Karr’s arrest in Thailand on a first-degree murder count, it was only after the warrant was issued that investigators started asking questions experts say would form the bedrock of a successful homicide prosecution.

For example, it wasn’t until Wednesday morning, after Karr was in Thai custody on that warrant, that a representative of Boulder DA Mary Lacy’s office called the Marion County School District in Hamilton, Ala., where Karr once taught, to seek anything in Karr’s handwriting for comparison to the ransom note allegedly left by JonBenet’s killer.

Similarly, Lacy’s office has still not contacted the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to compare anything from Karr – DNA, handwriting, a palm print, footprint or even shoe size – to the evidence found at the murder scene.

Nor did the DA’s office consult with education officials in Colorado or California to see if they could track Karr’s teaching history.

Karr’s ex-wife and kids also weren’t contacted to see if they would provide an alibi for Karr’s whereabouts at the time of JonBenét’s murder. The ex- wife has told a San Francisco television station that she is sure he spent Christmas 1996, around the time of the murder, with her and the family.

Likewise, the spokesman for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department in California, which has had a fugitive warrant since 2001 seeking Karr’s arrest on five counts of misdemeanor possession of child pornography, said the department was unaware of Karr’s possible connection to the Ramsey case until after he was in Thai custody.

At a news conference Thursday, Lacy indicated that “exigent circumstances” forced the arrest of Karr to occur before she would have preferred. She did not disclose any of the evidence she has that ties Karr to the crime. She added that an investigator from her office was dispatched to Bangkok, Thailand, on just a few hours’ notice before Karr was picked up at the request of her office.

Lacy’s spokeswoman, Carolyn French, reiterated Friday that public safety and fear of flight generally drive decisions on when to arrest someone.

But former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman raised questions about the handling of the case.

“You must conclude either Mary Lacy has solid, conclusive evidence or this is massive prosecutorial incompetence,” Silverman said.

He said the Sonoma sheriff’s office could have been notified by Boulder that Karr was in Thailand and then could have used their California warrant to seek Karr’s detention there. Or the U.S. Justice Department could have been asked to issue a warrant charging Karr with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Silverman said.

While either California or federal officials had him in custody, evidentiary tests could have been performed that would corroborate Boulder’s case against Karr or exclude him, Silverman said. That way the public – and potential jurors – would never have known that a suspect was being tracked in the JonBenet case until prosecutors had it nailed down.

Or detectives could have followed him to a restaurant in Bangkok and picked up a cup he had taken a drink from and done a DNA test, he said.

There was substantial evidence at the JonBenet murder scene that is available for comparison to any suspect, officials say.

Law enforcement sources have previously confirmed the girl was found with “foreign” DNA under her fingernails.

The DNA reportedly did not match genetic material collected from dozens of Ramsey family members and friends. There also was DNA in her underwear.

CBI spokesman Lance Clem said experts there processed 3,000 pieces of evidence, including DNA and 150 handwriting samples, in the Ramsey case. It took 3,000 hours of processing time to develop the evidence.

The office has been asked numerous times to process new evidence in the Ramsey case, but the last time CBI criminologists processed any of the evidence was in June 2005, Clem said.

School Superintendent Bravell Jackson of Marion County, Ala., where Karr briefly was a substitute teacher, answered a request Wednesday from the Boulder DA’s office and faxed a copy of a letter Karr wrote to the district in 1996 when he was fired from the school.

Silverman said the DA’s office could have requested the letter earlier. The ransom letter is critical to solving the Ramsey murder case, he said. If Karr’s writing isn’t a match, it would be compelling evidence that could exclude him, he said.

“Why create this hubbub when you could conduct all the corroborating tests while he is in someone else’s custody?” Silverman asks.

Bryan Cunningham, a Denver attorney who tackled international drug cases as a federal prosecutor and extradited drug kingpins to the U.S., said no prosecutor who has probable cause to prove a murder case would ask a foreign government to expel a fugitive on a misdemeanor offense.

Treaties with certain countries may not even allow an extradition on such a minor case as the misdemeanor pornography charge in California, he said.

Christopher Mueller, who teaches evidence law at the University of Colorado Law School, said he believes Lacy has strong evidence in the case, either physical evidence connecting Karr to JonBene;t’s murder or he has described elements of the crime only the killer would know.

In an ideal world, all loose ends, including a DNA test and handwriting comparisons, would be done before an arrest, but if the DA had worries that Karr would flee or molest more children in a school where he was teaching, that would be a good reason to file charges first, he said.

And if DNA tests show that Karr was present in the Ramsey home, it probably won’t matter to anyone whether the bulk of the investigative work took place before or after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

“I think it is too early to know if the DA has done something precipitous,” Mueller said.

Also Friday, a Thai police official backpedaled on his earlier assertion that Karr had said he drugged JonBenét and picked her up from school before the murder.

Both of those statements were seized upon as inconsistent with the evidence in her murder, but Friday, Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, commissioner of the Thai immigration bureau, said Karr had not said those things, but his earlier statement was the result of a misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that Boulder investigators were interested in a yearbook signature Karr gave to an Alabama classmate, and California authorities unsuccessfully searched the cell of the person convicted of killing 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993 for ties to Karr.

Karr wrote in the unidentified woman’s yearbook: “sometimes, so blocked by my own eyes, I’ve seen the best things come and go simultaneously; though deep in the future, MAYBE I SHALL BE THE CONQUERER AND LIVE IN MULTIPLE PEACE.” He signed it “Angelicy Forevermore.”

The phrase “shall be the conqueror” matches the cryptic initials “SBTC” left in the ransom note by JonBenet’s likely killer. Analysts working the case at the time speculated that those initials probably stood for “Saved By The Cross,” though without a suspect willing to talk, there was no way to know.

Staff writers Karen Rouse and Michael Riley and Cox News Service contributed to this report.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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